The week prior to the first run had us in rehearsals in Sydneys 301 studios with full production, enabling us to get a handle on the new elements and instrumentation for the tour.

On the audio side, the PA consists of a main LR hang of 12 x K1 over 6 x K2, 8 x K1SB (flown per side), sidefills of 6 x K1 over 8 x K2, 18 x SB28’s on the floor and Kara front fill. Coverage has been stellar. FOH and monitors are being handled by Digico SD7’s with waves extreme servers at FOH for plug in capabilities.

Empires #2 and #3 are coming in April/May and July..details are here!

Here is some footage from the tour as well as the newly released music video ‘Say The Word’ from Empires.

]]> http://www.jamesrudder.com/2016/03/16/united-empires-1/feed/ 0 http://www.jamesrudder.com/2015/12/16/united-in-asiaindia/ http://www.jamesrudder.com/2015/12/16/united-in-asiaindia/#respond Wed, 16 Dec 2015 18:33:15 +0000 http://www.jamesrudder.com/?p=1658 December saw us take a taste of Empires to Singapore, Indonesia and India. The Star Performing Arts Center in Singapore was a truly a pleasure to mix and a great way to star the tour with Digico SD7’s and LAcoustics K1. In Jakarta, I was once again reminded of how astonishing Adamson product is with E15’s and T21’s. Both were great nights and it was great to be in Asia once again.

It was our first trip to India and after not knowing what to expect, was pleasantly surprised with LAcoustics K2 with delays of VDosc in order to cover the vast expanse of beach right in the middle of Mumbai. It was certainly an amazing event to be apart of.

The 96 inputs from stage (and various other positions) were handled by an all encompassing Digico network with an SD10 handling the bulk of the work at FOH, accompanied by an SD8. The stage was handled by 2 SD10’s…the workload distributed amongst band and vocal outputs on stage.

On return to Nashville, Crosspoint Church embarked on their first studio recording project with a 4 song EP. We tracked at Black River Sound Stage  in the ‘Front’ studio with the 80 input SSL 9000J over two days in a full band tracking setup. Currently the project is in overdub mode at The Chapel with mixing to start in the next few weeks at my residence. Its shaping up nicely!

Next, its off to Sydney, Australia for Hillsong Conference 2015.

The idea behind studio Welcome to 1979 is to actively bring an ease back to analog recording with well maintained vintage gear, while still having the ability to easily record digitally or transfer from analog to digital come the end of the session. We happily decided to record directly to tape which is quite the novelty in the modern recording era and something that I hadn’t had the opportunity to do in quite some time. We are really happy with the results and listeners hopefully will welcome a little tape hiss!

From here, overdubs are next..keep a look out for a pending release!

Here are a few photos from the session! Many thanks to Jane Howard from 1979 for a professional and pleasant assisting role all day.

As with the other studio projects United has undertaken, we created an environment of ‘stations’ in the studio live room so that anyone, at anytime could access and play any of the instruments that were set up. It allowed the necessary time to workshop many of the still developing songs. It meant that on a technical level, every instrument needed to be able to be ‘live’ at anytime and hence we exhausted all of Studio B’s input and tie lines as well as the entirety of the consoles inputs. Even then, there was a fair bit of shuffling and re-shuffling depending on the workshop required. At full setup the studio B live room was exciting for any musician to enter.

As you can see from the picture above, we employed 2 different drum setups. A tighter sound goal under the ‘drumbrella’ and a more open vintage sound in the open space. I was really, really happy with the results we achieved in both spaces.

For the audio people looking at this post, a good indication of the full setup is attached below via a spreadsheet with comprehensive information with regards to microphone and outboard gear selection.

Unit5d Oceanway 14 – Patch and Notes

Many thanks to the Oceanway staff and in particular Scott Moore who assisted tirelessly and with professionalism throughout.

Here are a few photos of the madness:

Following this post I will delve further into the gear and recording process at Oceanway in Los Angeles!

A number of options for doing this on the Midas have emerged and on the most recent Hillsong Live tour I was able to implement the RPM–TB24 I/o along with Waves Multirack in order to make this happen.

I expect that a console alone can handle a comprehensive mix and sound good while doing it. I also think that its a great thing to hear a live mix..so because of this I used the multirack software sparingly on its first outing. C6’s on vocals, API550 on electric guitar, LA2A on bass and the SSL compressor on the master buss caused the system to use 32% of its processing resources and it was solid as a rock while it did, as you would hope and expect.

This system is a very powerful addition to a digital console and one that I will be looking to use again in the near future.

*While the system is solid, as we all know, technology on occasion can fail us..because of this I saved a ‘inserts out’ scene after each soundcheck and I would recommend you do as well!*

While not completely diverting from songs that have been played on previous tours, with the release of Zion more elements had to be incorporated in the setup to allow the best representation of the current album to be presented. While visually the easiest thing to spot was the ‘mountain’ set, in audio it meant more inputs on stage, filling up all of the 80 Midas Pro 9 inputs at both monitors and FOH. Due to the amount of inputs, we also utilised the KT DN9696 in order to capture and playback all the inputs from stage for soundcheck purposes.

Mid America Sound provided all things production and for audio that meant a 28/8 L-Acoustics K1 and Kara for the main L/R and downfill, 18 Kudo for side fill, 16 flown K1-SB, 18 ground SB28’s with an additional 8 Kara for front fill. Ricki Cook designed the system and was able to implement its workings on the majority of dates, supported by the Mid America staff.

As mentioned before, the Midas Pro 9 was the spearhead for the inputs coming off stage, complimented by some outboard units to suite my own personal preference. They were the Lexicon 480L and TC 2290 for FX processors, the Rane C4 for dynamic compression, the Empirical Labs Fatso Jnr for drums and the Avalon 747 on the stereo bus for additional compression and EQ. Lake Processors took care of distribution and overall system management.

The tour was thoroughly enjoyable and a real challenge on all fronts. I think I can speak on behalf of all of the crew involved that it will be something that we will remember for a long time and no doubt be able to enjoy again in the near future.